Radio Wars: The empire strikes back

This is part 3, Click here to read parts 1 and 2.

Ok, so we last left off with A new hope in local radio with the rebel alliance now known as Merge 104.8 launching it's attack on the Galactic Empire known as Hi FM. Interestingly, in the background, the Ewoks (90.4 Oman FM) have discovered vocal branding and now have jingles. Still no logo that I've come across yet, but a jingle is ground breaking for the forest people, good stuff, I wonder if we'll ever see a website from them?

Last Tuesday 7th June at 7:00 AM, the Rebel commander, Chris Fisher came on air. My first impression was that he actually came on air at 7:02, and his clock was 2 minutes slow, and apparently continues to be. Perhaps they have a different time zone in Rebel HQ up in Seeb. Chris was, at least to my mind, a little slow starting but seems to have settled into things now. I also find that the DJ's Radio Presenters at Merge seem to be muffled - turn up the gain on the mic guys, or speak louder or something.

To combat the hype of Merges.... emergence (heh) the people at Hi FM have rolled out the very popular Black Eyed Peas competition, and appears to have retained a good many of their listeners in this first week of competition. I note the girls in Darcy's Kitchen the other day were still listening to Hi, as were Glacier Cafe.

And lets now have a real good look at Merge. Their branding is excellent, and their social media campaign seems to be doing well - local blogger Andy in Oman appears to be extremely excited by anything Merge and has blogged a couple of fluff pieces about the new radio station, and, like me and a few other bloggers, has opted to place a Merge banner on his blog. I do also recommend (totally unrelated) his blog on bitching and moaning. Excellent stuff. Merge are even offering people a chance to win RO 104.8 every day - and all you have to do is "like" their facebook fan page. At the time of writing their total "likes" were at 479, I suspect they shall blow past my 820 likers in no time at all. If you happen to be reading this and have "liked" me on the 'book - many thanks :) And if you have not "liked" me yet.... it'd be lovely if you did.... :)

Back to the Rebel alliance. In a rather amusing coup, Merge 104.8 have placed a billboard on the roof of a building close to Hi FM's HQ. When travelling on the Muscat Expressway from Qurum to Khuwair, it looks as if there is a Merge billboard on top of the Hi FM building :)

The music that Merge is playing is pretty much the same as Hi FM in my opinion. OK so I have heard tracks from the soundtrack of Slumdog Millionaire a few times and the odd Hindi track here and there, but essentially it's the same music that Hi FM is playing out. The evenings and weekends are good - I especially enjoyed the 80's stuff on Thursday afternoon and the Friday afternoon chill out too.

I am wondering how on earth Merge are getting away with playing uncut versions of songs on air though. I have heard a fair few swear words while listening in, and in the Hed Kandi show there were a lot of references to drugs that I would have thought should have been edited out. Does Merge have some sort of deal with the Ministry of Information, or have the Ministry just not started listening to them yet? I'd imagine some fines will be levied if Merge carry on... or maybe not? At least boundaries are being tested!

Rummy during the lunch break continues to impress me, it's good to see local talent being given a chance. I wonder if her success will pave the way for other local radio presenters? There has been a lot of hype about Merge's launch, and just like when they finally released Duke Nukem Forever the other day, its been a little disappointing. Just a side note for those who don't know their video games, Duke Nukem Forever has been in production for 14 years, and has been hyped a lot, which makes it hard to live up to.

Now I'm not saying Merge is bad, I'm just remarking that because there was just so much hype over the station, I kind of expected something unobtainable - perfection. I do feel that Sayeh needs to sit closer to the mic than Chris, and that they both have this terrible habit of totally ruining songs by talking all over them. But I acknowledge that this is a style of radio presenting and to be honest they're the professionals, not me.

I could go on and start a critical review of the new radio presenters, Chris, Rummy, Sayeh, Sami and Marcus (from Hi)... but I think it's too early to do that just yet. I do have to say that I think Sami has taken to radio presenting like a duck to water, from the part of his show I did hear last weekend, I was impressed, but was driving to a friends house and so didn't carry on listening. I will also say that I don't mind coming out and saying it: I don't like Sayeh on the radio, it has nothing to do with the music she plays (or the computer plays when she's on) and I find her a nice person to talk to face to face.... I just don't like her style - nothing more or nothing less. Personally I prefer Erins show.

The radio poll we have done here on the blog has now come to a close. I intentionally launched this poll before Merge's launch. My reasoning? There was a lot of marketing and buzz around the new station and regular readers of MM will have known about the station before I posted the poll, I also wanted to establish a benchmark to compare to later on. The results are as follows:

Hi FM took 48% of the vote (95 votes)
Merge 104.8 took 26% of the vote (53 votes)
Oman 90.4 took 9% of the vote (19 votes)
Ipods/Cd players too 15% of the vote (30 votes)

In my crude analysis, this tells me:

1. Hi FM are still dominating amongst you, the readers.
2. Merge have quickly established themselves as a strong alternative
3. More people listen to their ipods than listen to Oman FM

I'll re-run this poll again in a few weeks/month or so and see how the results compare.

Back to you lovely readers: So now we've been merging for just under a week now - what are your opinions on Merge?

le fin.